believing sinner returning to Him, and takes him into fellowship with Himself, that is, he takes the notion of justification in the sense of the justificatio injusti (Rom. iv. 5, δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ), and thus refers it to the first moment of the Christian profession, to the forgiveness of sin which establishes the standing of the believer in grace.

Now as James undoubtedly taught with the first apostles that whoever believeth in Christ and is baptized receives forgiveness of his sins (Acts ii. 38, iii. 19, x. 43), though the expression justification for this act of forgiveness might have been strange to him, he would not in anyway have contested the Pauline idea of a justification by grace on account of faith; he would simply have insisted that works must follow (cf. Acts xv. 11). The distinction of James' and Paul's doctrine is thus a purely formal one, but as such is certainly not without significance. In the first place, it is clear how much nearer the doctrine of James is in point of form to Jesus' own doctrine, how much more primitive it is than the Pauline, which, with a bold stroke, makes dikaιoûv τὸν ἀσεβῆ, which was forbidden to the judge in the Old Testament, the expression of God's right to put grace before justice and to justify sinners. For that very reason, however, James' doctrine of justification is the more imperfect and unsatisfying in point of form. It cannot be doubted, that if we take the doctrine of James in its strict literalness, only the man who is perfect in his works (i. 4) could reckon on God's favour. And if, on the one hand, we all offend in many things (iii. 2), while, on the other, he who keeps the whole law and offends in one point is guilty of all (ii. 9), it appears as if no man can stand in that future judgment which is to take place according to the perfect law of liberty (ii. 12). But that is not James' meaning. He knows of a forgiveness of sin, not merely when a man becomes a Christian, but also within the Christian life, a forgiveness that is ever new and plenteous (v. 15, 20), for God is very pitiful and of tender mercy (v. 11), and the merciful shall also in his judgment obtain mercy (ii. 13). But this doctrine of pardon is in no way formally introduced into that doctrine of justice and of judgment, just because Christ and Christ's cross have not yet become to James the central point of his doctrine. He is

satisfied, after the manner of the Old Testament, to derive the forgiveness of sin immediately from God, and to connect it with the conversion of the sinner (v. 20); he seeks for an understanding of that saving act of God which is peculiar to the New Testament, in virtue of which God can bring to the believer in Christ the assurance of an infinite forgiveness, because in the same Christ is the guarantee for the perfect sanctification of those who believe on Him. It is entirely different in the case of Paul, who finds in Christ's death the source both of the pardon and the renewal of the man; Paul is therefore able to show us how God, without any self-contradiction, can justify the ungodly who believes, and yet can at last demand of him a perfect righteousness not imputed, but bestowed and made his own.

CHAPTER VI

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

§ 1. LOVE OF GOD AND CONTEMPT FOR THE WORLD

James' doctrinal account of Christianity is thus an imperfect one; but all the more distinctly marked is the ideal of Christian life as it appears in his exhortations, which are urged with the greatest moral earnestness, and was evidently realised to some extent in his own character. Certainly this ideal of life is characteristic of an individual, or perhaps rather of a class. It is the ideal of one of the "quiet in the land," one of the pious poor of Israel, who before he was a Christian had lived by what in the Old Testament piety was most closely related to the gospel, and consequently, even after he had found in Christianity the fulfilment of his longings and a complete inner freedom, could remain on the peaceful boundary line of the Old and New Testament. That earnest and unforced love of God which saw in Him the highest and the only true good, so that the heart was not divided between God and the world, was for James and the best of his readers the fundamental fact in personal religion, just as Jesus Himself had taught (i. 12, ii. 5, iv. 4). In

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this disposition James calls it believing to prize only the eternal blessings, and doubting to waver between them and the temporal blessings (i. 6, 7, ii. 4). In this disposition he demands of his readers that they hold the miseries and vexations of the earthly existence for pure joy, because through the trial of faith is produced that brave patience, that endurance which overcomes the world, and makes them worthy of the eternal crown of victory (i. 2, 12). And, in the same spirit, there is rooted in him that noble pride which will not bend before riches and the power connected with them, but, in the high consciousness of being rich in God, treats rich and poor with the same independence and kindness (ii. 1-9). Poverty as such is not made a virtue and riches a sin, nor is asceticism and the outward flight from the world preached. Our Epistle shows no trace of this spirit which was already mighty in the second century. It is in the Christianity of personal sanctification, of active brotherly love and patient hope, that that fundamental disposition of love for God manifests itself.

§ 2. SANCTIFICATION AND ITS MEANS

The idea of sanctification meets us in two forms: negatively, as a demand to keep oneself unspotted from the world (i. 27), and positively, as the task of becoming perfect and complete, lacking nothing (i. 4). Of course this goal is not to be reached without an ever-renewed repentance and conversion; man, by nature inclined to yield to his lusts and passions and to be the friend of the world, has to turn himself ever more completely from the world to God. "Submit yourselves to God," cries James in this sense to his readers (iv. 7); but "resist the devil, the world-spirit, who provokes and allures you,and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands,—namely, for prayer, —ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of God, and He will lift you up." The fundamental mood, however, of the Christian, which must grow out of this submission to God, and which forms the presupposition of any

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positive growth in sanctification, is πρaʊτηs (i. 21, iii. 13); this is not so much meekness towards men, as quietness before God; the meekness which, as the contrary of opyý, all restless, excited, passionate frames of mind, enables the man at all times to listen to the voice of God, and allows himself to be guided by His word and will. Not that James by this meekness, which was manifestly a favourite idea of the " quiet in the land" (cf. Matt. v. 4, xi. 29), meant a purely passionless and will-less piety; on it he rested an active spontaneous life in God, a life in prayer, in the word of God, in the doing of the divine will. All moods of mind and experiences of life were to drive the Christian to intercourse with God. "If any man suffer, it is said (v. 13), let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms." Even the earthly necessaries of life may be prayed for, though not from covetousness and longing for enjoyment (iv. 3). And the prayer to which brotherly love. and compassion for a brother's need in soul or body impels, has its own great promise: "The prayer of a righteous man availeth much, if it is earnest," it is said (v. 16-18), with reference to what Elijah accomplished by his prayer. But the Christian has most of all to ask God for wisdom from above, for the heavenly light of His Spirit, which, in the darkness of his misery and temptations, will show him the right way, and grant him the power of perseverance. Therefore, in i. 5, immediately after the exhortation to see in the manifold. temptations so many instruments for the trial of faith and means of inner perfection, it is said: "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." And, further, the life of the Christian is an active life in the word of God. This word, which was once planted in his heart, in his second birth, and which is able to save his soul, filling it with the powers of eternal life, he needs and desires to appropriate ever afresh in meekness, in a quiet collected frame of mind, whilst he puts away everything of an ungodly nature (i. 21). And he does this not as a forgetful hearer, who only looks for a moment at this glass of self-knowledge, he steeps himself in the divine word in order to live and move in it, and in this way he receives strong and constant incitements to the doing of it (i. 22-25). In thus doing the divine will, and, if need

be, suffering under it with joy and patience, personal Christianity on earth reaches its goal of peace. "He who is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word, shall be blessed in his doing" (i. 25). His whole life then is a continuous worship of God in spirit and in truth. "Pure and undefiled worship before God the Father," it is said (i. 27)," is to visit the widows and fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." That is a contrast, quite in the prophetic style, to the Pharisaic manner of regarding oneself as religious and pious, although one does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart (that is, deceives himself about his heart).

§ 3. WARNING AGAINST SINS OF THE TONGUE

This Christianity of the heart and of active love is opposed also to the pious and impious talk too largely prevailing among his readers. It may be a feature in James, characteristic of pre-Christian times, that he, like the "quiet in the land," values silence more than speech; the golden rule of life (i. 19) sounds like a saying of the proverbial wisdom before Christ: "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath." But this pious inclination, which was perhaps the result of training, had been deepened in him and become a Christian virtue. The mastery of the tongue appears to him the most decisive proof of Christian sanctification; this little member, which is yet so powerful, appears to him, after profound observation of his talkative, quarrelsome, murmuring, swearing, cursing people, the most untamed of all. "If any man," he exclaims, "offend not in word, he is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body" (iii. 2). And again, "Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison" (iii. 7, 8). There are special kinds of the abuse of speech which he chiefly condemns. Above all, murmuring, slandering, judging, cursing, which he regards as outbreaks of lovelessness towards our neighbour, are in his view sins of the tongue, and he felt it was hypocrisy at the same time with the same tongue to praise God. "Therewith bless